Tagged With rime

Beautiful adventure game Rime wasn't quite as beautiful when it was released on the Nintendo Switch back in November, suffering from severe frame rate drops, bad pop-in, faded colours and poor lower resolution textures. Yesterday's 1.02 update doesn't fix everything, but the game looks and plays so much better now.

Anti-piracy protection software Denuvo is getting cracked faster and faster on more games, with certain games made free by hackers in as short as a week. Denuvo says that the protection is meant to protect games during "the initial sales window", but is that even the case any more?

A week after release, much of the discussion surrounding Rime isn't about the ruins or the mystery, but rather piracy. Players claim anti-piracy software slows the game down. Pirates say the newly cracked version of the game fixes that problem. Rime's producers seem unsure if DRM caused performance hits, but Denuvo itself denies there is a problem at all. It's a mess.

Rime, the indie game caught halfway between Ico and Journey, was released last week. With Denuvo DRM. Like a lot of games. But that made some players angry, and prompted the developer, Tequila Works, to state that once the Denuvo DRM is broken, which it eventually always is, the company will release a DRM-free version of the game.

Look at a screenshot of Rime. Any screenshot. Take in the swirling colours, the vast oceanside vistas, the stark, mysterious ruins. It's all distinctive, and yet somehow familiar. Rime wears its gaming influences on its sleeve, but it lacks their heart.

May hasn't been as hectic as the last couple of months when it comes to releases, but it's certainly not for lack of trying. This week is especially chockers: Rime is finally available, almost four years after it was announced, another Star Ocean game appears, the Wii U gets a new game, there's a platformer about a dog trying to save its owner, and Ultra Street Fighter 2 lands on the Switch.

But the one that will probably catch most people's eyes is the return of an underrated gem: the remaster of Vanquish hits PC this week, complete with an unlocked framerate and 4K support.